Study 11 The Cross - What is it?
Whatever our understanding of, or attitude to, the Cross, it is fundamental to Christianity. I was taught in the church to be very solemn at Easter. This was the most important festival of the Christian year. Christmas was a happy time. Significant? Yes, but Easter was really the story at the very centre of the Christian message.
Stoning was the usual way of Jewish execution. Rome adopted the Phoenician and Persian way of crucifixion. It was common. The cruelty of this form of capital punishment lay not only in the pain of its prolonged physical torture but also in its public shame.
The shame was very public. The victim was scourged severely and then forced to carry his own cross along public roads, stripped of all his clothing and, after being affixed to the cross, could not care for any of his bodily needs. The victim was often subject to taunts and indignities from passers‑by.
Crucifixion damaged no vital part of the human body. Death came slowly ‑ usually after many days ‑ as a result of fatigue, cramped muscles, hunger, thirst and suffocation. The victim was sometimes offered a drug to deaden the pain.
Crucifixion was also a symbol of cursing. Death by crucifixion brought the victim into public disrepute. An ancient curse was placed on the one executed in this way.
Rome reserved crucifixion for slaves and foreigners guilty of robbery, tumult and sedition. If the crime was sedition the scourging, prior to crucifixion, was merciless, so much so that sometimes the convicted died because of it.
Turning to some of the earliest writings of the New Testament we read in 11 Corinthians 15:3 -
Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures.
What would be meant by this? There can be little doubt that ‘Scriptures’ refers to the Old Testament. Paul wrote these words.
There is little doubt that Paul, a Pharisee and a teacher of Pharisees, was steeped in the Hebrew religious sacrificial system of worship. This would have been an essential basis for his understanding of the human/God relationship prior to becoming a follower of Jesus. It is more than reasonable to assume that he probably brought this personal history with him thus influencing him in his understanding of the cross.
As we read the stories in the gospels it becomes quite clear that:-
Jesus went willingly to the cross. Many times in the gospels it is made obvious that Jesus understood his rejection would eventually lead to the cross. The gospels show us a man who voluntarily accepted the cross. He chose it.
The gospels teach that Jesus saw the cross as both necessary and essential. It was not a result of uncontrolled circumstances. Jesus accepted the cross as essential to the will of God for him. In the story of the garden of Gethsemane he was not trying to discover God’s will, he was trying get the courage to act upon it.
Jesus did not regard himself as a victim of human hatred. He understood himself as an instrument of God’s love and the servant who would bring about God’s justice and peace.
The New Testament writers say many different things about the cross, its meaning and its power.
There are a number of metaphors or models used to facilitate our understanding. Sometimes these metaphors are mixed or at least laid side by side in the text.
They include :-
1. In the Jewish sacrificial imagery, Jesus is the perfect sacrifice replacing all past sacrifices as an expiation of sin that reconciles people to God. Expiation is a word used at least 20 times in Leviticus. It is the word used to explain the reason for, and the benefits of, sacrifice. To expiate means to atone for, make amends or reparation for. Its ancient meaning had to do with wiping away. The similar Arabic word means to cover, or hide. It may be helpful to refer back to Hebrews 9:11-14 quoted on page 12 of Study 9.
2. Jesus’ death is a ransom. This ransom is paid to free humanity from slavery to sin and bondage to Satan, the devil. The payment had to be made to the devil because he had temporary power over the world and sinful humanity. By the death of Jesus, humanity was freed from the devil’s power.
3. Jesus bore the penalty for sins. Death was the penalty. The cross saved us from having to pay that penalty because Jesus died instead of us. This metaphor has the name, substitution.
4. Taken with the resurrection, the cross is the means whereby Christ defeats the powers of evil. The phrase often used for this metaphor is Christ the Victor.
5. Along with the resurrection, the cross is the means of Christ’s glorification and the sending of the spirit.
6. The cross is the supreme example of courage, integrity and love thus providing a means of moral influence.
When dealing with these six different models and when trying to say what one believes about the cross, it is often the case that one mixes at least the first three.
When the statement is made, ‘Christ died for me’, we could mean that he was the sacrifice that wiped away my sin, No 1; that he rescued me from hell, paid the ransom and got me out of the clutches of the Devil, No.2; and/or that he died in my place, paying the price/penalty for my sin, No.3.
When I try to remember what I was taught in the church through the years, I arrive at something like this.
It is a very short précis.
All humans, including me, have sinned by disobeying God’s will. We are not perfect. This sin has created a gulf between God and me/humanity and this must be bridged. As we are, we cannot approach God. He is just and we are too dirty.
We humans can do nothing about this because we are sinful and imperfect. There is always something that makes us all sinners. We must repent, or ‘The wages of sin is death’; death meaning an end to the relationship between humans and God.
Humanity is doomed but God, in His love, provided the perfect sacrifice in the death of Jesus His Son, the one who was, and had to be, without sin. Jesus Christ bore the sins of the world, including my sin, paid the price and thus gained redemption for all who believe. He freed us from the punishment that we all rightly deserve, ie. going to hell, and reconciled us to God. When God received the blood sacrifice of Christ, God could then forgive. So, if we believe in Jesus we are reconciled to God and can now go to heaven.
This probably has a mixture of Nos 1, 2 and 3 of the previously mentioned models.
The Hymn, ‘There is a green hill far away’, poetically states reasonably clearly the basics of what I was taught.
He died that we might be forgiven,
he died to make us good,
that we might go at last to heaven,
saved by his precious blood.
There was no other good enough
to pay the price of sin,
he only could unlock the gate
of heaven, and let us in.
O dearly, dearly has he loved
and we must love him too,
and trust in his redeeming blood,
and try his works to do.
The poet of these lyrics was Cecil Frances Alexander, who lived from 1818 to 1895. We probably have all six New Testament metaphors above in these three verses.
Question for discussion
What do you think?
Personal comment
I find all but the last of the above 6 metaphors very unhelpful because it appears that sin is the centre of the situation. Sin seems to be the pivotal point around which everything else revolves. Sin caused Jesus to come and die. Sin demands a sacrifice. Sin is so universal, all humankind is doomed unless a blood sacrifice is made.
It seems that, although God is said to provide the sacrifice, God is involved in the circle of violence. Sin, it seems, can only to be dealt with by more suffering and death. Someone has got to suffer. Someone has got to die! More violence! God wills it!
In contrast to this, I believe that love is central. I believe that love should be the pivotal centre of Christianity. I believe that love and love alone, conquers sin and broken relationships. Love is that which makes forgiveness and acceptance possible, that which enables a second chance to be available. God’s unconditional love needs no blood sacrifice to enable reconciliation to take place. Love, and love alone, can give birth to reconciliation.
To think that someone else’s suffering and death gives me right of passage to God and God to me is somewhat grotesque for me. For me, that flies in the face of personal moral responsibility and also presents a totally unacceptable concept of God demanding ‘the pound of flesh’. So I do not believe that Jesus died for my sins, in a way that this is generally and traditionally understood.
That certainly does not mean that I don’t take sin very seriously. It is an ever present sinister and tragic reality, ready to domineer and insidiously swamp our being. It is evident both individually, corporately and nationally to a frightening degree. Evil seems to feed off itself.
It is conquered and neutralised only by love.
Its shackles are broken only by love. Humanity is liberated from it only by love.
Why then did Jesus die? When a life of love is lived so unstintingly, so uncompromisingly, it will be killed, or at least it runs the risk of an untimely death. The history of humankind is full of examples of this principle. If we want to know why Jesus died we need to look at the way he lived. If we want to know how Jesus lived we need to look at the way he died.
Jesus defines the process. His life of courage and integrity, his identification with the poor, the oppressed and the outcast, his rebellion against oppression and injustice inflicted by the powerful, his subversive teaching and his unshakeable grasp on his own personal freedom and responsibility, his unwillingness to be tempted to espouse a lesser vision than he himself had and his wasteful compassion inevitably led to death. Had he not lived that way, he may not have died the way he did.
Peter Abelard, a French Philosopher/theologian, 1079 - 1142 CE once wrote -
Christ died, neither because a ransom had to be paid to the devil, nor because the blood of an innocent victim was needed to appease the wrath of God, but that a supreme exhibition of love might kindle a corresponding love in the hearts of men and inspire them with the true freedom of the sonship of God.
Love is at the centre of God’s relationship with humans, always has been and always will be. It has taken thousands of years for humanity to understand and accept this. Even today it is by no means universally accepted.
So, how is sin dealt with? It is forgiven. This forgiveness in not cheap and without tremendous cost. If it is seen thus, it is completely misunderstood. The brokenness of the relationship between God and humans is shown, in all its force, on the cross. This demonstrates the lengths to which evil will go - it will crucify perfect love.
But love cannot stay dead. It will always rise again no matter how much it is killed. If one is killed because he/she loved, a thousand others will continue to love even in the face of a continuing threat; because love never comes to an end. Like hatred and violence, love continues. But Love triumphs: Love has the last say. God is Love.
All this, I believe, is firmly based on the teaching of the New Testament. I could quote numerous passages, both long and short. Many readings from the gospels, both parables and other teachings attributed to Jesus, as well as many teachings from Paul confirm, for me, these emphases. In particular, much of the first Epistle of John is very significant for me.
Question for discussion
What do you think?
Print Booklet (Download and print double-side, flip on short edge) The text of the bookblets has been edited somewhat and because there are many pictures in the booklets, all reference to them has been omitted.